Wolff counters Hamilton: 'Mercedes was faster on the hards'

Mercedes were strategically beaten by Red Bull Racing at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday. Toto Wolff calls Red Bull's aggressive approach brave and will analyse with his team what went wrong.

Aggressive approach from Red Bull

A strong start saw Hamilton take the lead in the American Grand Prix, but from the very first lap it was clear that Max Verstappen was able to keep the pressure on. That pressure only increased when Verstappen and Red Bull opted for an aggressive undercut, taking Mercedes by surprise.

''The team (Red Bull) went for the undercut out of necessity. That was a brave action, because it was very early. And the second time they used it again to their advantage. On the other hand, we were behind the times, because the car was not fast enough during the first stint on the mediums,'' Wolff said opposite Motorsport.com.

Wolff disagrees with Hamilton

Verstappen called for his team to bring Perez in too in order to force Hamilton into an early pit stop, but Wolff argues that his team did not respond to this intentionally. ''At a certain point you are just too slow and you lose too much time. That was also the case with the second pit stop, where we didn't have the pressure from Sergio. We simply had to stop because he (Hamilton) was too slow.''

Whereas Hamilton indicated that Red Bull were simply too strong this weekend, Wolff does not want to go along with that. ''I think Red Bull was the faster car on the mediums and the Mercedes was faster on the hards. We have to analyse the weekend from Friday to Sunday and see where we went wrong,'' the Mercedes team boss concludes.